Overview of V3 contacts functionality

Contacts are central to everything a Constant Contact user can do using the product or the API. Customers are usually billed according to the number of active contacts they have in their account.

Contact Resource

The contact resource is composed of core properties and subresources. By default, contact resource request and response payloads only include core properties. This streamlines the size of response payloads when retrieving collections of contacts.

To include subresources in response payloads use the include={subresource} query parameter in the request. Learn more.

New contact_id Format in V3
contact_id values are formatted as UUIDs (Universally Unique IDentifier) format, 8-4-4-4-12 for a total of 36 characters (32 alphanumeric characters and four hyphens). The V2 format was string.

Create New Contacts

There are different ways to create contacts with the V3 API:

  • Create new contacts one at a time by making a POST call to the /contacts endpoint. For more information, see Create a Contact.

  • If a contact has given you explicit permission to send them emails, use the /contacts/sign_up_form endpoint to create a contact or update an existing contact based on their email address. This means you do not need to make a separate API call to check if the contact email address already exists in the user account. For more information, see Create or Update a Contact.

  • Use one of the import contacts bulk activity endpoints to create up to 39,999 contacts in a single API call. For more information, see Learn more.

Custom Fields

The V3 API supports the same flexible custom_fields naming rules as in the product UI. Custom fields are no longer required to use the restrictive custom_fieldn naming format in order to be accessible through the API. Also, the V3 API is not limited in the number of custom_fields it can show for a contact.

custom_fields are a subresource of the contact object. Use include=custom_fields to include them in a response payload.

Learn more.

Delete Contacts

You can delete contacts one at time by making a DELETE call to the /contacts/contact_id endpoint. Or delete 500 or more contacts using the delete contacts bulk activity endpoint.

Learn more.

Add and Remove Contacts from Lists

Add and remove contacts from lists using the list management bulk activity endpoints.

Learn more.

Get Contact Consent Counts

To gain insights about the current consent state of all contacts in your account, make a GET call to the contacts/counts endpoint. Optionally, to include the total number of new subscribers in the results, specify new_subscribers in the include query parameter.

Learn more.

Get Contact SMS Engagement History

To get SMS engagement details for a contact, such as SMS consent and advertising frequency details, make a GET call to the /contacts/sms_engagement_history/{contact_id} endpoint.

Learn more.